Interview with Barrie Galpin

Barrie first became involved with the project in 1997 when he joined the volunteer team monitoring the translocated Ospreys. He designed the Rutland Ospreys website in 1999 and has been the webmaster since then. He worked as a member of the project team for four summers from 2003 and, job sharing with his wife Tricia, was the Project Officer until Tim Mackrill took over in 2006. 

How did you first get involved with websites, and specifically the Rutland Ospreys website?

In the mid 1990s I taught myself to create websites and began by producing the Rutland Water Nature Reserve site. In those days I was using some software called Claris Homepage - it would seem very primitive now but it worked and, because it was very basic, it was a very easy job to update the website regularly. One of those new fangled digital cameras provided small and grainy photos.

In 1999, with the Osprey project in its fourth year, Tricia who was the Assistant Project Officer, came home with some exciting news. Some of the young Ospreys were going to have radio transmitters fitted so that their migration routes could be tracked by satellite.  My immediate thought was that it would be possible to publish the data as we received it, so why shouldn't the Osprey project have its own website? You have to remember that in those days satellite tracking was in its infancy and no-one had put migration data immediately into the public domain.  Tricia and I cobbled together a proposal, Anglian Water agreed, and the most exciting period of my entire working life began.

Was this time the highlight of your involvement with the website?

Yes. As the Ospreys began migrating we had absolutely no idea where they would fly. Every morning I made a phone call via a modem  to a computer in Toulouse. Reels of numbers came slowly down the phone line - there was no broadband connection in those days. I constructed a spreadsheet that would sort out these impenetrable numbers and calculate how far and on what bearing the bird had travelled on the latest leg of its flight. Then I needed to look up the latitude and longitude on my old school atlas - no Google maps then to help identify the location. "Wow - look where it is now - what's it doing there?" Next I used the data to construct a map using some very simple mapping software and finally the map and some interpretation were published on the website.  

As time went on, it became clear that people all over the world were logging on to the website and many sent us helpful or interesting emails. We encouraged these discussions strongly, knowing that we had lots to learn from many of our correspondents. These contributions from around the world are still relevant and can be found on the Questions area of the website.

It was not only the details of the individual birds' flights that were new to science. It was also very exciting to discover that there was a strong tendency for young Ospreys to start migrating in a south-westerly direction and to realise that this was probably due to the genes passed down from their Scandinavian forbears.(See http://www.ospreys.org.uk/Questions/Question%20SW.htm)  With collaborators from around the world, we were developing a much clearer understanding of Osprey migration and ecology. It was tremendously satisfying, exciting and great fun!

Why do you think the Rutland Ospreys website has proved so popular over the last 10 years?

Apart from the buzz of excitement from new discoveries, I think people also liked that we tried to avoid "spin". If there was bad news we reported it. If we were worried we said so. Once the migration satellite tracking was over, we continued to report with integrity what was happening, writing what we referred to as an Osprey Diary. It would be called a Blog now, but back then that ugly word had not yet been coined.

I've already referred to some of the early murky pictures. One of the great strengths of the site in recent years has been the very high quality photos taken by John Wright. When we want to describe an Osprey incident there is (almost!) always a picture illustrating what was happening. Other Osprey websites may have close web-cam images but our site specialises in high quality images supporting what I always hope is vivid, well-written description.

But basically the Rutland Ospreys website was poplar because it was telling an exciting conservation story in a down-to-earth way.

Apart from the website, what have been the highlights of your involvement with the project to date?

There have been so many great moments and every year the first flights of young Ospreys affect me greatly. But the really big highlights include the time when the first translocated bird returned in 1999 ( it was good old 08 of course!) and the moment we realised in 2001 that a chick had hatched for the first time in the nest of 03 and his mate. Then there was bringing the young chicks down from Scotland and holding the young birds while Roy Dennis fitted the radio transmitters. Great days too when we visited colleagues working with Ospreys in the Lake District, Wales, France, Italy and Morocco.  More recently 08 and 5N's success in Manton Bay was a real highlight.

Apart from the sheer joys of watching Ospreys, what has given me the greatest pleasure has been the contact with other members of the team. I've been able to encourage some new volunteers to join us and have shared in their delight and the excitement as they realised that they too could read ring numbers and identify individual Ospreys. Then there's the old hands who started at the same time as I did: we have grown in skill and experience together and I've learned a lot from them.

How do you see the project progressing in the future?

Rutland is clearly a very good place for Ospreys to breed. There's an abundance of food, plenty of nest sites, and no threat of persecution. So I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the breeding population really takes off here, just as it did in Scotland and France after a similarly slow start. I'm certain that there will be Ospreys breeding all around the area in a few years' time. As that happens the Osprey Project will need to continue to evolve with a changing emphasis. Even when there are Osprey nests all over the region, I think visitors will still want to come to see them at the Nature Reserve where they can get friendly and informed guidance, as well as a brilliant view of the nest. I'm sure staff and volunteers will be kept busy more and more as time goes on.

What advice can you give to all budding webmasters?

• Decide what sort of reader you are going to write for. To use a print media comparison, do you want a broadsheet or a tabloid? Do you want a glossy mag or a scientific periodical? If you try to be all things to all readers you will surely fail.
• Having decided on the type of reader, always think first what they might want to read, rather than what you want to tell them.
• Updates must be regular but relevant. If there's nothing to report don't be afraid to say so!
• Avoid using the latest gadgets, bells and whistles. There's nothing more annoying than, for example, a little cartoon Ospreys that flies around the screen or embedded Java applets that don't work on half the world's browsers. So, KISS: .... Keep it Simple Stupid!

How does it feel to be giving up now?

We have actually been running down my involvement with the website over the last couple of years, so at the moment it doesn't seem too big a wrench. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Tim Mac and the rest of the team will take the website forward and exploit the best of the new technology that will appear in the years to come. 

But I'm certainly not intending to give up volunteering on the project yet awhile: I have every intention of monitoring Ospreys in Manton Bay every summer Sunday afternoon for the next  20 years. Hope I'll see you there too!